Martinez Fischer enlists ‘strange bedfellows’ on redistricting

Here’s Trey Martinez Fischer, the San Antonio Democrat who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, rehearsing the argument he’ll be making tomorrow when the House takes up House Bill 150, the House redistricting bill sponsored by state Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, who chairs the House Redistricting Committee.

“One of the most disappointing aspects of House Bill 150 is its outright denial by Chairman Solomons that the state has grown in the last 10 years at the hands of minorities,” Martinez Fischer said. “Eighty-nine percent of our growth in this last decade is exclusively due to minority population increase, largely African American and Hispanic. You take the Hispanic community, they grew at a rate of 65 percent over the course of this last decade. Simply put, if it wasn’t for the growth of minorities in this state, there would be no congressional seats to talk about. So if we are the reason why Texas is going to gain four congressional seats, and that’s been acknowledged, you would not see that in House Bill 150. . . .”

Solomons’ bill has the backing of the Republican establishment, although many of the freshman Republicans are unhappy with it, because a number of them are paired with each other. Martinez Fischer says he’s working on a battle plan to oppose Solomons’ bill by approaching those disaffected Republican rookies. If he can count on 30 or so Republicans joining the Democratic minority in the House (49 in all), he’s in the game. Martinez Fischer’s deal is that the Republicans would have to agree on an alternative map that not only would offer them more protection but also would create five new Hispanic seats.

“We’re talking to anybody who’ll talk to us, and if they’re willing to accommodate us and grow our map by five new Hispanic seats then we’re certainly going to talk to them,” he said. “I think there has to be an acknowledgment that if you want to create more minority seats, you can. It just appears to me that Chairman Solomons and the leadership don’t want that to be the case.”

That’s the reason, Martinez Fischer argues, that Harris County ends up with 24 districts instead of the current 25. “It’s pretty clear,” he said, “that if you added a 25th seat in Harris County, there’s absolutely no way you could draw a 25th seat in Harris County and that seat not be a minority seat. It is mathematically, demographically, cartographically impossible.”